>> caller: hi. i heard the director mention that if there's another surge. well, i don't know if you're aware, we're in another surge. community transmission is currently high positivity is higher now than it was at the height of the delta surge. this is all coming from the c.d.c. website. i e-mailed my rep. i'm not making this up. i twitter and tag everything that i can. no one seem to be listening that covid is still present. everyone is at risk for long covid no matter how healthy and vaxed you are. if you're getting bad information from the public health department, somebody really needs to do something serious about that. this is serious. this is not over.

please take this seriously. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker. >> caller: good afternoon m.t.a. board. thank you for it meeting. i'm totally in favor of the no cars in golden gate park. but at the same time, we have to realize that we do have to have a limited access to take the paratransit customers. i'm happy there are representatives there from the paratransit accessibility team. it is not that big of a ask for to you allow us to use the transit lane along with the muni bus. we're not going to the park in droves. also, elderly and handicap, they have a long day with their grandkids in the park. they can't walk out to the

fulton and lincoln. we need to have couple of spots for taxi so they can easily get out of the park. do you really care about the public of san francisco and the handicap and the elderly, you must make that change. it's okay to add something to your decision and make an improvement. we are here voicing our opinion because it's real. it needs to happen. it's just absurd you guys won't allow us to drop off somebody in their 80s on a hot day in front of the museum. we beg of you guys please add in a limited access for us. we're not circling the park trying to look for fares. if you give us a couple of spots for taxi stands, we can just post up and not drive just wait for somebody to come out. please reevaluate your decision,

totally in favor of the decision you made. i agree not to have cars in the park. thank you. >> clerk: you have five more callers. >> caller: good afternoon. this is joe. thank you for having me today. i e-mailed you last night about what thought about your mask mandate, lack of mask mandate. if you heard from other callers, step up to the plate.

it's time for you to find your inner stefani. if i want a woman, i want to be -- i want to be tough and brave and resourceful and fight this bloody covid. step up, man up and get this done. why do we have to say we have to make mask mandate go away. i don't think there's a lot more that have to be said. director tumlin i'm a fan of yours. if you need -- you need to lead now. thank you for taking my call.

[ indiscernible ] >> chair borden: we're on item number 9. please call back in 10 minutes. thank you. next speaker.

>> caller: hello. i'm from the senior disability action. i like to talk about the mask mandate. we can go to google online and go to san francisco covid infection rate and look at the graph. our infection rate has start going up ever since the mayor had released whatever it is, the general mask mandate. it's been going up ever since. if you look at the graph, our infection rate in san francisco is at the same rate as mid-february. we are going backwards. it seems very strange not have a mask mandate at this time. it will make it even worse for us and continue on with this covid. i'm tired of it. let's do the right thing to the very end so we can get rid of it

or at least it's not at a high rate. second thing about, yes, the j.f.k. drive is closed. it doesn't make any sense to allow paratransit on there but not paratransit taxi. it's not accessible now. at least have the taxis go on to j.f.k. drive. over 55% of paratransit users use the taxi. it makes sense to continue on with the taxi service on to j.f.k. thank you.

>> caller: hello. i'm betty trainer. i'm the board president as senior disability action. i wanted to say people ahead of me have spoken eloquently about the urgent need to reinstate the mask mandate on muni buses in san francisco. covid levels are rising in san francisco. covid can be spread on crowded buses. i take the 38 geary bus regularly it's getting so crowded people are returning to work, students are returning to school. people just starting to get out more. many disabled people and senior srely on public transit. we are extremely vulnerable to becoming infected with covid virus. please reinstate the mask mandate for the safety of our bus drivers and passengers.

>> caller: hello. i'm a san francisco resident. i'm calling to keep the mask requirement. not everything has to be back to pre-covid. it's not over. this does greatly impacts immunocompromised but this benefits everyone. flu cases have gone down so significantly. wearing masks really should be the new normal. even if surges go down, we're guaranteed perfume surges and

other variants. i stand in solidarity with previous callers. please support in keeping the mask mandate. >> caller: i think you need an orientation on the pandemic. especially on the two -- [ indiscernible ] why do we have the c.d.c.? you're following the directions of somebody who just telling you to do something and you're going to do it? some of you should resign. this is madness. we need to keep our masks on for

the sake of our children! do you get it or not? also you need to -- you have to have the ability to do an assessment. if you are leading the m.t.a., everybody should wear the mask. we have -- it's very dangerous. read the reports from the c.d.c. get an orientation on how virus evolves. otherwise step down from the board. you're putting people in harm's way. thank you very much. >> chair borden: next speaker please.

>> caller: hello directors. happy tuesday. i'm with richmond family s.f. i'm calling to support senior disability action request to reinstate the mask mandate i'm getting e-mailer my preschooler was exposed to covid. i've been getting them throughout the past few years. it's still very scary for those of us with children under five. please reconsider. i want to shot out -- [ indiscernible ] i'm very excited that the m.t.a. taking over the management of the garage. it's so underutilized. if you haven't been down there, go down there. drive through it and ride your bike. you have to check it out. it's an amazing space. thank you so much. have a good day.

>> caller: my name is lisa church. i wanted to thank everyone on this staff for your work on j.f.k. i know it was very hard. i'm very excited to have it in place. i cross down to be there all the time. i'm very happy to hear about all the hiring. i hope that transit continues. mostly, i'm calling in to say i'm a daily muni rider. i very much hope you listen to all the previous callers and reinstate the mask mandate. there's no reason for it to be removed. i really hope that you help us keep san francisco safe and all of us that depend on muni to be able to get on the buses and feel comfortable.

>> caller: hi. i want to ensure that we continue to represent our seniors and our vulnerable communities while they're taking public transit. it's important that we continue to do that. one of my main concerns is to ensure that it's the polite thing to do to wear a mask inside a transit. we can think about summer is right around the corner. there will be an increase in ridership during this time. tourism will be up. i'm thinking there's going to be lot more folks wanting to use public transit. in that time pier, there's going to be folks that will rely on that, vulnerable folks. we have to ensure they are safe riding it. making sure daily chores that they have to do t taking care of their families just like anybody else, making sure they are safe.

let's keep people safe. this is a public we're talking about. no life is lesser than another person's life. let's make sure we're doing that in a safe capacity. >> clerk: that was our last caller. i have one new speaker card. >> hello, good afternoon board of directors. i'm here to talk about taxis getting access to golden gate park, j.f.k. drive. that will be wonderful. there has to be a way to carve it out. two years in the pandemic, it's really no imposition to carry a mask in your pocket and wear it on transit. that saves even one life, i think it's important for

everyone to think about. another caller mentioned there's like pressure from the mayor's office. forget about that. it's about people's livelihood and about their health and safety. thank you very much. >> chair borden: we are done with public comment. we'll close public comment. people make comments about pressure. that's not what the truth is. i caution people from making judgments about things that they don't have firsthand knowledge about. next item. >> clerk: citizens advisory counsel report. no report today. item 9, public comment. before we begin, i want to share that we did receive late ask for language assistance. we'll be calling in to our language line, service via phone to provide translation.

for any members in the public in the room requesting language services in cantonese, spanish or any other language, please see caroline here. she'll organize the groups and do a translations that way. >> chair borden: great. >> clerk: i do have speaker cards. if you need language assistance, please see caroline to the side here of the room by the front doors. >> i'm from the coalition on homelessness and today -- a year ago, on may 4th, after hearing compelling testimony from folks who live in their vehicles and their advocates, the board asked

the sfmta staff to report on racial and financial equity issues around poverty. it has not been done yet. los angeles stopped all poverty tows two months ago in response to a federal lawsuit. sfmta has been sued for poverty tows this year. in -- that case is ongoing. has the board received an update on this case? why does the public not know what's going on? does the board know? i wanted to show you that our stop poverty tows coalition sent a letter on march 2nd drawing attention to these lawsuits to resolve this litigation before it continues been the city stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for practice that really does not make sense. we want sfmta staff to provide

an update to the board about why it has not ended these poverty tows in light of the board's clear disapproval ongoing litigation and guidance from l.a. where this cruel practice has already been halted. thank you. >> thank you. i wanted to speak to the situation with the fly wheel apps failure to make payments to drivers in a regular and reliable consistent fashion. in some instances this has gone on for years. some instances drivers are owed

thousands of dollars. i don't mean to personalize this. i'm not speaking here for myself. i hope i'm speaking for many other drivers. this is really happening. at one point, i was owed over $1000 and for over a year. right now, i'm getting paid may be once every three weeks. it's been almost four weeks now since the last shift i was paid for. this is simply unacceptable. it's particularly acute right now because fly wheel has this deal well uber. they will be in charge of the payments to the drivers. this is really important that this gets settled.

the only protections that we have are the protections of regulation. [ please stand by ]

we wanted to also respond to some of the things that director mentioned and i was talking about the citizens advisory committee of mission bay and i have kevin, executive director ever ucsf campus planing and theories a. executive vice president of alexandria real estate which is in charge of the hi-tech knowledge companies which have parking and donnaly ler a she tired gas and electric company and resident of one of the condos and in mission bay

which has parking and yoyo chan, vp of government and community relations for the golden state warriors which uses our suite for parking. sarah davis resident of one of the house boats which has parking spaces for them and vice president of san francisco giants, michael free man representing the condos and toby levin the only who represents the affordable housing community but this is only for mission housing and development corporation and it's only one there's eight of us and you know a lot of them are here. i just hope you guys listen to all of us, thank you. >> thank you, next speaker, please. >> i'm with one thing that was

communicated by the director of streets, the name slipped my mind now. he said he was saying about how the rpp is not intended for surgery groups of people and he include us in this group and if you look at the -- what is it, sorry. the planning, the plan for the area, it says that the -- i'll read it. wait a minute. i can't find it. sorry. basically it's saying that i the said it's not for outsiders it's to keep cars from people outside of the neighborhood off the

streets and which we're not, we're actually, we live there and it didn't encloud -- it's for our commuters to keep those cars off their streets and that's not what we are. we actually live there and we need to park there. we have to. it's not a choice for us. it's kind of a bad situation. hopefully something can be done. thank you. >> thank you for speaking. >> next speaker, please. >> yes, hello. my name is monique and i live in mission bay. we are here to request for residential stickers for our cars because the parking meeters are becoming -- it's a hardship. we're all low income housing, seniors, and families with cars and i understand it san francisco wants to promote

people using public transportation but it's not a reality when you have small children and you have to go to the store. the fact that we have to live there in our residency and the parking is like $8 an hour, during special events, that are back-to-back, not only that, they're mandating for people to have credit cards and things like that and sometimes they might not have that going on right now so i want to speak up, not just for myself but my whole entire community and the children and the seniors. thank you. >> thank you >> hello my name is evelyn and i'm here also requesting a solution for us in mission bay.

for parking. i have two small children and we'll use public transportation if it wasn't because i have two small children that i need to drop off, pick up every single day from daycare so it is really difficult, especially when we have to pay for such high amounts of money and we're just asking for a solution for us. thank you. that's all i have to say. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please. >> i'll read off a few games. row see o yemen does, leah chen.

>> thank you. >> >> so i live in the mission bay area and i'm retired but i still am pretty much involved in like sports and par participating in sports and because i have no income, i cannot afford the $8 an hour parking. so i'm hoping that the government would be able to do something with the parking rate to help out as seniors retired seniors. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> hello, i'm (inaudible).

[voice of interpreter] >> i live in the mission bay area as well. the reason why i have brought my kids here is that to try to convince the government to help us with finding affordable parking. we have like a 80-year-old at home and a 5-year-old and so for us sort of middle income families, it's very difficult to afford like an $8 an hour parking at the facilities. hopefully we're hoping the government would sort of look into solving our parking problems and giving us what we should be -- what we rightfully

park -- giving us a more affordable way to park. >> next speaker, please. >> >> i live in mission bay area so i just think that is not really designed for us as a low income family and there's no way to take out building from the ground and put it somewhere else and those people who go to the park or chase center pay like $500 for a ticket or they don't care if they pay $8 for parking but it's like we forced to pay like them and so, i think i sent

all i really needed to say. >> thank you. >> i'll read off a few more names. roberta moore, chante'. ben and alena dupres. >> i came out from civic center earlier today with garbage. his services i would rather bart than muni because it's cleaner. your trains are filthy. your buses are filthy. this is ridiculous. during a pandemic they should not be dirty but back to another situation. when you walk from mission bay down to fourth and king, you guys got no stop signs, at fourth and long beach. you got one stop sign. we also take our lives at fourth and long bridge.

and there needs to be something done about that, man. i got got ran over at 9:00 this morning. because you got one stop sign. there needs to be something done at fourth and long bridge. thank you. >> thank you. >> next speaker, please. is there someone in the queue based on the cards you called? go ahead, sir. >> i don't think i'm in chronological order of the names you called but my name is ben, taxi driver. i wanted to put something on this thing. i think i figured it out. so, i don't know if it's going to work. great. i've been happening out these

flyers to drivers all week and it's really been an eye-opening experience it seems like there's this like organized campaign of wage theft by the app and the photo of the driver here frankie fox they owe him over $1200 since the beginning of the pandemic so for two years he tries calling and he can't get anyone and he couldn't make it here today so i wanted to speak to frankie's experience and there are dozens and dozens maybe hundreds of drivers like frankie out there who have not been paid by the app. frankie's solution is to decline every order they send because he has no trust that he will get paid because they vote him for so long. so this is the flyer i've been handing out to the drivers this week. and i don't know if we need to get david chiu, city attorney involved but it appears as though beer getting into the realm of organized campaign of

wage theft from drivers and it's unfort a we thought fly well was our best weapon against uber but if they're keeping the driver's money it's a big problem. so, you know, taxi and accessible services she said to the c.e.o. a couple weeks ago at the meeting you need to pay your drivers so i want the board of directors, please hold this sfmta accountable because we condition have this stand. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon, directors. president of flywheel technologies. first i want to thank you very much foray proving the up front

taxi fare pilot that will start very soon. we think that this is going to be a transformative pilot that is going to change the way taxis and ride shares work in more of a collaborative fashion, through out the united states and maybe globally. i do want to speak some things here today. i have never personally dealt with such personal harassments since we announced this strategic partnership with uber. the reason i'm speaking here today is to make it very clear, our company is not the enemy. we have stayed loyal to the taxi industry, trying to modernize the taxi industry to make e hailing and smartphone booking a standard service. unfortunately, a small minority of drivers want to go backwards in the way that taxis used to service the city. do you remember? trying to get a taxi in the richmond district and so fourth. the future is smartphone booking

in e-hailing. on top of that, we've been able to partner with uber to provide their customers to taxis to be serviced as taxi rides. it's quite as ston issuing what astonishing, weservice 30,000 t3 cities in the united states and there's a common theme we're seeing. the industry is still backwards in the technology it needs to be competitive. so although we're suffering harassment about changes we're trying to if you tell in the pu, we're pro taxi and i want your support in the future, to make sure taxis can be competitive going forward. thank you. >> if you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is izzy ola from fly

well technologies. so as you know, it's a app, the modern app that connects risers to taxi drivers. but i want to give you facts about fly wheel. so to date, we have booked over $5 million -- 5 million rides in san francisco, taxi rides and of that, $100 million has been paid to drivers. i just want to you get an understanding of the impact we have in the city when it comes to driving taxi rides. if we didn't have the fly wheel app i'm sure those rides would go to the ride share companies because we provide that modern experience, what you expect in today's world, right. but yes, there are drivers that are owed money. and a lot of that has to do with the way we process transactions and deal with charge backs and fraud. we don't pay drivers until we get paid. it's the way we've always run the model. so there are times when there's

fraud of the rider and we've seen a lot of crazy stuff and drivers commit fraud. we have to hold it and resolve it and it's time-consuming, most of the time we resolve it but there is sometimes we don't and we still pay the drivers. not enough is said about how we pay the drivers when there's fraud and we don't get paid. we get charge back fees for this. our biggest fault and i'll take it on is we don't communicate with the drivers. when there's a fraud and we're dealing with it, we don't say hey, you are not getting paid because we are dealing with this. we don't do that. we're trying to solve the root cause of the fraud in the timely payments and the good news here which i've been telling the drivers and we already have over 100 drivers registered is our new payment platform providers and it's a company called lien.

>> if you are around later i would love to talk to you. we can't do it because it's not on the agenda but we have a lot of questions about flywheel. next speaker, please. >> they didn't call my name yet. >> i did, go ahead. >> all right. >> i don't feel like standing up there for a long time. thank you, again. for those of you who haven't met or seen me now you have. i'm alena dupres, she and her. now you get to see what i look like and that i am the face of an ordinary user of muni. i represent simply myself and therefore i can speak about what i want to and i'm an independent

voice here and i think it's very important to keep working on clipper because if we really want to save money for people of all economics and demographic strata, clipper is the way to go because you will always save money so we have to work on that and become an all clipper-based system. how can we be a san francisco that is sometimes i wonder if we're in tune with what is going on in the world. i have flown 24 times since last june. every time i get my boarding pass, on my phone, and i see it all the time in the airports. and i have the clipper app so i have not used it because i have the reduced fare clipper card. i mentioned to you, please do not forget those of us who have reduced fare clipper cards. we pay less but we're not evading fair. we're still paying into the system.

it's a real legitimate program. i have mine because i'm a service connected veteran over 50%. so i ask you not forget about those of us who use the reduce clipper card. i'll show it to you if you want to see it some day. i ask again that you will be inclusive. that you will have me on your system just like everything else. i pay my fare and follow the rules of conduct and i hope to be back in a meeting soon. thank you. >> thank you. >> next, please. >> good afternoon. my name is manual garcia and i live in mission bay. i support my neighbors because we have a lot of problem with the parking. so right now i don't have i problem with that because my wife, she's got an injury and she's disabled so we have the plate. i know a lot of people have a problem with the tickets and a lot of people cannot pay the ticket too.

the only thing is we need to know if we can help us with that. i don't know what to do to explain that. >> thank you, very much. >> thank you. next speaker, please. >> >> hello, my name is rosio mendoza. we want a request for a solution that can help us. right now, the parking situation is very hard. meeters run from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. monday to saturday and sometimes on sundays. so you know, we understand that mta has said that area was designed for parking meeters so maybe something else can be done to accommodate us. maybe we can get a special card and a list maybe for free after 6:00 because usually most parking areas, meter parking areas run from 9:00 to 6:00 so

maybe that would be a rely. at 6:00 they can stop and other visitors can pay the meeters but for us anything, at this point anything can be a help for us. even if you want to park far away, which is what i do, the lowest free area is 20 minutes away and it's only four hours. even if you mark there you have to go back every four hours to move it and if you work from home or you have kids it's hard. maybe you can do the work but little kids they're like no. that's too far for me, mommy. so, yeah, thank you. [applause] next speaker, please. [please stand by]

>> the other problem is even greater. several drivers report not being paid for one or two years. amounts ranging from little over $100 to well over $1000. i want to tell you about a driver named joe. he's 70 years old. he retired since covid. all of his working life, joe worked hard. he took one day a year off work, new year's day. one day a year. he bought and paid for his

medallion. how could this happen? he met with us. we know they want to pay people. one of the things he told us they didn't have the money. what happened to this money? it wasn't their money. we also call on you to appoint new mutual to oversee the process. all drivers was significantly delayed payments. these drives have been owed money for two years.

>> caller: i would like to see a medical finding done on the challenge of walking a quarter of a mile to the bus stop for seniors and disable. we really have to do a medical finding on this. i have been issuing this request for years and it's been ignored. the second thing i want member of the board to take a chain or walker and walk a quarter of a mile to the bus stop and see the impact on that. the board is really been ignoring this. it's detrimental seniors to

disable. this is totally unfair. we are a significant portion of the city population. you have to take this under consideration. that's all i have to say. >> chair borden: next speaker please. >> caller: hi. this is hamilton carter. i live in district 11. we don't have a car so we take the muni every day. we don't have any other way to get around town. it's tough on foot. with cases rising again, i have

a pulmonary condition and unsafe for me to ride muni with unmasked riders. i like to request in muni bring the mask mandates back. it impacts the driver. we sat and watched after we got e-mail after e-mail that the bus routes weren't going to run. for us inconvenience that the bus didn't run. we had to sit there and think the driver has covid. that's kind of seems bad. please bring masks back to

protect the riders. >> caller: hello. this is barry toronto again. great, first, i need to give a shot out to the investigator. there are lot of hard working employees at the m.t.a. taxi access and mobility service. there's nobody that works harder than peter wood. please honor him at your next meeting. he is fantastic. the next issue is we have a problem at the baseball game. they start threatening writing tickets for us doing our job and picking up at the ballpark. we got a problem here. somebody is looking into this situation. we should not be abused and threatened by p.c.o.s.

i love izzie. izzie is great. he has done a great job. stop using the word rideshare. you're not taxi friendly if you use ride share. you cutting off your nose to spite your face by the fact that so many drivers don't trust the app company. because they haven't been paid at all or in a timely manner. therefore, it hurts people who want to use the app including an sfmta official who called me frantic. that's the problem. it is fantastic. all i ask at least get started by expediting, bringing more drivers over to using the app. let's do it. i volunteered to work with izzie to get the drivers accommodated

to the app. it's fantastic. it puts confidence back in the drivers getting paid on time. thank you very much. >> caller: hello. just noting it's interesting looks like the director left during public comment. i don't know. maybe that's a trick of the camera. it doesn't make me feel heard. first getting more ridership on muni and helps with vision zero by getting cars off the road. why not work towards free muni have a trial run and see the impact free muni would have. cities like fresno, california with a republican there have tried it during the pandemic. i like to see some hard data on why free muni isn't a goal. second, speaking of cost, --

[ indiscernible ] i like to see the data how much it's costing us for muni to harass certain people on certain muni lines. maybe if they weren't afraid of fare checks we'll have more ridership. mass transit should be the goal for trying to curve the climate crises. we don't have a plan, all of this is bull. >> caller: hello. i'm responding for a translation. >> clerk: we would need to call back in. >> chair borden: i think director cajina can help. [speaking spanish]

>> director cajina: i'm a resident of mission bay. i am requesting help with the ticket situation and fines. the $8 an hour is too much. i'm please asking for help. i'm inquiring about residential permits. the financial burden is quite stressful. it is more expensive to pay parking than it is to live in

mission bay. >> chair borden: thank you. next speaker please. >> caller: my name is hanny. i live this district 11. without the mask mandate it's not safe for me to ride muni. i also can't get vaccinated. please bring back the mask mandate. thank you. >> chair borden: next speaker please. are there additional callers. >> caller: hello. can you hear me? >> chair borden: yes, we can. >> caller: i'm a medallion

holder 561. i drive for fly wheel cab. from january 2021 to january 2022, i was late in getting paid from flywheel to the amount by end of the year, they owed me $3208. in early march, i talked to izzie about it. in march, i got deposited something like $2900. it took care of my payments from january 2021 to january 2022. i'm still owed money for january, february and march of this year. i'm still in the process of calculating how much i owe for april. here's the thing, fly wheel

wants cab drivers to go ahead and work for uber to pick up uber passengers at below the meter rate. the main thing that our taxi cabs they give us an advantage over uber is that our rates stays the same. if you get in a cab on new year's eve or sunday morning that meter is still going to be the same rate. if a person goes to call for a cab and uber cannot supply a driver, that person is going to call the cab and everyone knows this. for uber to ask fly wheel to pick up their drives, uber must be playing fly wheel a large amount of money in order for fly wheel to do that. is fly wheel getting paid by uber. >> chair borden: thank you so

much sir. we are not able to answer those questions. thank you. >> caller: hi. this is adam in d6. i live in south selma. i wanted to call in and in strong support our neighbors in mission bay and the issues that they're having with parking and their desire for residential parking permit. i understand the arguments about master plan design. here in south selma, we know from experience that sfmta has often overruled its own original master plan design. an example of that is on fourth street with the central subway line. fourth street was made two ways and designed so in original contract and drawing to be in compliance with state guidelines. sfmta decided not to do this has

not implemented any mitigation measures. we regularly see cars driving the wrong way along fourth street. we regularly see illegal turns at fourth and brannon. sfmta has no desire to enforce any of this. despite repeated pleas by the neighborhood resident. the excuses that you make when you tell the residents in mission bay that it's against the master plan to have residential permit parking, ring false. we know from experience that things are changed without residential input. things are changed for the benefit of sfmta and these changes do put people at risk. another example, a two lane alley but sfmta demands is actually going to handle three lanes of traffic. cars regularly and trucks

regularly up on the sidewalk. these issues have been with the sfmta for years. decisions that have been made by this body is ignoring the local residents. thank you. >> caller: i'm calling in support of masks on muni vehicles. anything you can do to reduce of risk of muni in the middle of pandemic is very important. ultimately, masks are a risk reduction mechanism. they're not perfect which means that the cleaner we have the air in the vehicles the better for everyone. particularly for people who cannot wear masks such as infants, people with breathing devices or small children. thank you.

>> caller: hi. i drive fly wheel taxi.

on march, i received $154.70. fly wheel still owe me $644.32. i hope fly wheel -- [ indiscernible ] >> caller: hi. i had difficulty calling in before. i hope i can talk about mask mandate. i'm calling in support bringing back the mask mandate on muni.

i've been thinking a lot about safety during the pandemic, how about governor newsom will lift mask mandates and counties will follow and local businesses and organizations will follow. i think about how these decisions are based not on public health but rather on capitalism, ableism. on desire to return to normal. s.f. positivity is high. we know case numbers are undercount given people are doing home rapid tests. we don't know how future variants will impact that rate. as someone who's had symptoms that overlap long covid, i would not wish that pain on my own worst enemy. i hope you will not fall to group think and to act in accordance with public health. please do the right thing and

bring back the mask mandate. think about how you might feel later on in life. we're the a critical moment in time where you can make courageous decisions and not just go along with the group and be proud of the ethics and morals that you showed at this moment and the bravery. as a disabled person and care giver this mask mandate is beneficial for everybody. pleases bring become the mask mandate. thank you. >> clerk: that was the last caller. >> chair borden: we'll close public comment. the hardest thing about public comment is that we are not able to have a discussion about the items that are brought before us. under the brown act, you have to publicly notice at a meeting what you will talk about so that members of the public who might be interested or able to be there and participate in the discussion. public comment is challenging because we've heard some things

very much concern us. we definitely do want to figure out how we can work you from mission bay and work on those problems so staff will be following up. related to the taxi issue, the concerns about fly wheel are very disturbing. i think there are lot of questions that many of us have. i understand there's some things transitioning in the payments area. that is another issue i think we would like to have addressed as a board. we cannot discuss at this hearing. i want everyone to know, we heard you loud and clear. we are working to have a discussion at the appropriate time so that members of public who aren't here today weren't participating can participate. thank you. next item. >> clerk: item 10, consent calendar.

members of the public listening on the phone, if you wish to address a board, press star 3 so you can be added to the queue. please identify which item number you speaking to. 10.1 requesting the controller to allot funds to the sfmta inna kovaleva. item 10.3, adopting a resolution making findings pursuant to ab3 ab361 to allow for continued remote meeting.

item 10.5, authorizing the director to issue with the department of human resources joint request for proposals for workers compensation claims third party administration services. to evaluate proposal and negotiate a contract with the highest rank proposer. that concludes the consent calendar. >> chair borden: directors any item you like to pull from the consent calendar. we'll open up to public comment. this is an opportunity for members of the public who have any comments on the items on our consent calendar. >> clerk: i have no speaker cards >> chair borden: is there a motion?

>> director hinze: i move the item. denied please call the roll. [roll call vote] -- >> chair borden: can you please call the roll. [roll call vote] the consent calendar is approved. >> chair borden: regular calendar. >> clerk: item 11, presentation and discussion on ridership van ness bus rapid transit performance, muni metro modernization renewal. >> chair borden: director, exciting news. >> i have some fantastic people here to deliver what i think is

a lot of good news and also the shapings of good news. i'm going to make an attempt to speak from here and have them peek from the podium. >> chair borden: as long as you're on the microphone. >> it's a pleasure to share and present recent program initiatives in the transit division. i brought alexander -- our transit performance manager and charles drain who our chief maintenance officer. they are just one of hundreds of people in the transit division and throughout the agency that are innovating right now and trying to work out lot of different thoughts. i will be talking about everything that we're doing to make the most of our current conditions. but also what we're doing to try to change and improve our feat.

we are going to be covering ridership trends. i think there's a lot to learn from the ridership. there's some real pockets of optimism and we're very excited about that. we've also got some exciting preliminary data to share from van ness b.r.t. we appreciate you coming out and celebrating that milestone. then take a deep dive into a number of interrelated initiatives designed to improve and optimize our rail service.

we had an opportunity to go into the subway overnight. charles shared with me a nap is critical. that's a lesson learned if you're going to be on the sun u subway at 3:00 in the morning. take a nap at 5:00 p.m. it was incredible to see the energy and the collaboration and the innovation that was going. what i don't have despite director tumlin's earlier advertisement is a really thorough update on the next steps for service restoration. we hope to have that in an upcoming meeting. we are aiming for july for the next round of service restorations. we will use the december plan as our guide for what you approve. we have so many moving variables

right now. we are finally delivering most of our service. we are only missing about 3% of our runs each day. i would really like that to be zero percent. i'm concerned that as we continue to add service and to keep up with the growth and to make the connections, which is so important, that we don't grow faster than we're able to hire and improve attendance and address some of the issues that are impacting us. we will be addressing that soon. i apologize that we don't have more specific details for you today. with that, i'm going to turn it over for the first part of the presentation to talk about ridership. >> hi. i'm here to talk about

ridership. we are seeing steady climb over the last couple of months in ridership. we did take a hit with a combination of sort of the typical dip that was a bit more exaggerated during the holiday season and then we got hit again by omicron. we're back. we're finally back up above where we were in fall of 2021 until this past month had been our high. that's some exciting news. today i actually want to talk about ridership on the weekend. we talk a lot about missing riders, missing commuters and lot of that is really focused on our weekday ridership. we've seen some interesting things in our weekday ridership recovery. i want to walk you through that. as of the first two weeks of

april, we were at 67% of pre-pandemic ridership recovered on the weekends. which is bucking trends significantly higher than our weekday ridership recovery. which is also the strongest in the bay area. the 22 fillmore is an exciting example -- this is one of those routes that we prioritized early on in the pandemic. we restored about 85 to 90% of the service hours very early on. we saw ridership rebound extremely fast on this route. this graph shows weekend ridership. weekday is excellent. we're at 96% recovered on weekdays as of end of march.

-- i think it's a little bit higher now. we added a connection to mission bay. we extended the overhead wires into mission bay to do that. it shows that you can direct resources towards community needs. >> chair borden: i feel like frequency is consistent. >> next we're going to go through three groups of routes. i grouped these routes by the type of service that they provide. these are the big routes. the 14r, 9r, 5, 5r and 49 and 8 are in our system. these all have above 60% ridership recovery.

these all received substantial priority treatments over the past five years. the work that we did ahead of the pandemic i think really paid off provided a rapid a reliable system for people who are returning to transit or who never really left. lot of these routes you'll see in may good number of them are above 50% of pre-pandemic ridership. these are riders that needed our system. they needed us to be there. we were providing that service for them throughout the pandemic. >> chair borden: i've been doing my part taking the 14 and 14r. [ laughter ] >> i'm a loyal 5, 5r rider. the next one shows some of the

more community focused routes. the 22 does blows everyone else out of the water. that reroute really contributed. the 29 when i was talking with our service planning team was as bit of a surprise. we're doing outreach about additional improvements on that line. hopefully more success to come. so our smaller and smallest routes i'm also a loyal 33 rider. they provide general mobility. on the weekends we're seeing that people are using them a lot to get around. their recovery has been really spectacular. connecting people to hospitals to recreation, to neighborhoods

sort of across the city, it's been success story. that's it for ridership for now. that was a little bit of weekend ridership success. the next one is sort of very preliminary, i want to emphasize preliminary review of early van ness b.r.t. performance. the top line items are -- we saw 13% increase in ridership during the first week. i can't express how big of a bump in ridership that is.

travel time savings we're hoping will improve as riders get acclimated using the new red lanes. travel time variability to issue of reliability has decreased up to 26% northbound and 55% southbound which is just numbers that are hard to find elsewhere. we'll continue to monitor this over time. we did do a quick preliminary

review of travel time savings compared to april 2016. you can see again, by the different time periods, 7 to 9:00 a.m. there was 29% saving. the midday period 24% and evening rush hour was 23%. really again very exciting, very preliminary numbers. >> former board member was reflecting today in preparation for this presentation. he wanted me to share that in 2016, this was a controversial decision. it wasn't easy for the board at that time to make.

this is essentially the north-south freeway. it took a lot of bold initiatives on behalf of the board to make this decision. it is clearly paying off. that kind of continued leadership and support and really pushing for investments in transit and in transit equity, we're just really grateful for it. i wanted to share that thought. i think it's easy once you -- [ indiscernible ] you can look at how easy that was. why don't we have 10 more of them. i want 10 more. >> chair borden: i'm hopeful -- what's interesting with the van ness b.r.t. it made it more being on the bus on mission street it's even more apparent like double parked cars slow you down. it will be interesting.

it might create a new level of support for going bolder on mission street. >> i'm very optimistic for that. sean kennedy is going to come in a few weeks and talk about muni forward 2.0. which really envisions the second generation of projects where transit riders are only stopping at stops. which is very close to what we've been able to achieve on van ness and what we like to be achieving system wide. the next thing that i wanted to talk about is our vision for modernizing the muni metro system. it is a complex process. it is not the rail system we would have designed in sin city. it is the rail system that we inherited from railroad and

speculators and lot of people that had a lot narrower goals than what we have today. it is also our greatest transportation asset in the city. it moves millions of people a year and it is critical to both our economy and community connections. what we envision for it is that it really is the best option for city wide trips. it supports our climate and environmental goals. it improves access, transportation related quality of life. it compliments and delivers on our vision zero goals. it's free of delay. the program is going to have both a surface element as well as subway congestion element. it's frequent and it's reliable

like what we talked about with the bus system it's safe and accessible to all users. this addresses personal security as well as accessibility for everyone. the connectsf program is really the road map. for this work. we've kind of attempted with this graphic to capture some of the major elements that we believe are needed for muni metro modernization. the subway renewal piece is the most complex. it is the investment in state of good repair this board affirmed in your recent budget decisions. it is also the muni forward surface rail program which we have under way and have made some progress on inner juta we

want to know when the vehicle leaves the yard, are we going to have a communication problem. that train can stay home today. right now we're finding out about it. we're in the miles of the portal. too late. can't help it.

can't do anything about it. really the combination of simplifying the system, adding more surface priority through the train control system is fundamental to that train control project. we're really grateful to the transportation authority in caltrans planning grant that we received four doing some compete planning studies we want to understand what element of this very expensive program can fall into m.t.a. core capacity program. we're working to defining that in the coming year and a half. we'll also delivering on some early wins in the subway and bringing the kind of precursor studies that we need to define the work. we're also not waiting for

ten-year improvement program to address conditions in the subway. we saw tremendous improvement during covid primarily through the simplified schedule and all of the amazing work that charles and his team did during the shutdown to really try to prevent breakdowns and other issues. we're trying to make that performance as transparent as possible. we know that you as a board when you made the decision to put the j back into the subway, ask us to track that work. we are doing that. it is all available at

sfmta.com/subway/performance/dat a. some of the highlights are shown here. the most important metric that we have for subway health is travel time variability. prior to covid, people were having to allocate upwards of 30 minutes of their day. they didn't know if they will be in a good day or bad day. you can see that that variability has dramatically been reduced. we tackled some slow zone ace some things that were creating problems for the average trip. which is why you're seeing the overall improvement. we are continuing to track this and to monitor this and we will keep the board appraised as we go. a symptom of subway variability

is subway cueing. that's essentially how often are you spending stopped in the subway when you're not in the platform. the answer should be never. prior to covid when we had a schedule that we really couldn't support, we were seeing sometimes two even three trains backed up as we approached embarcadero in the morning or as we were leaving with west portal in the afternoon. i'm pleased to say that we've seen a significant reduction. we basically eliminated multicar cueing with the simpler schedule.

we think that the shuttle which are providing lot of frequency to our heaviest ridership which is between west portal and embarcadero is incredibly important. we're working to make sure that we get everything running as smoothly as we can with the service plan that we currently have in place. with that, i'm going to turn it over to charles who's going -- incredible partner taking very complicated system and digesting it into a deliverable program. >> thank you. good afternoon directors. i'm the chief maintenance officer.

i wanted to talk about subway renewal program. early on as we started to communicate with lot of different groups lot of questions came how do we not find ourselves in this situation again? our team went and looked closely at lot of capital projects to understand what we needed, understanding what our vulnerabilities are, taking the best practices, understanding the difficulty of maintenance from all of our teams outside stakeholders and we've kind of come -- we have 104 different projects in the subway renewal program. it's a very fluid program. within that, we have principles that we really strongly believe in. we won't find ourselves as we do

a 10-year investment. find ourselves in 50 years asking the same questions, why are we here again. with some of the ideas -- keep our subway in state of good repair. this will be through asset management, lifecycle management. not just understanding that systems need to be based on time but we do things like continual investigations, condition assessments. looking at the usage of the system. switches in the portal are operated constantly.

we're understanding that and putting that in a comprehensive asset management system, understanding how to replace and understanding when to replace it. not waiting 45 years to do so. we have some complicated systems, software, hardware related to train control. we can't wait 45 years. we can't wait 10 years. imagine operating a control phone -- cell phone that's ten years old. we got to do things. track some of the hard test assets, the tunnel itself. they are viable. they are serviceable for 40 or 50 years if they are well cared for. understanding lifecycle management. improve our customer facing amenities. you probably seen that in church and castro stations. we're moving through that work.

we'll continue to do that and make those improvements during some of the shutdown periods. these are self-delivered initiatives. these are improvements that are made by the maintenance away team during the non-revenue period and fix it weeks. we'll continue to do just that sub ray rail -- subway rail grinding. it improves the ride and life of the rail system. something that we've not done in our history. it's a way of matching the profile to the actual profile of the train wheel. address known vulnerabilities. backups electrical systems, communication systems, fire safety systems -- we've been doing this 45 years in the metro tunnel. we know where the weakness are. to know that when some of the our partners like pg&e or other

utility providers communication folks let us down, we have backups that we don't have to stop the station. we don't disrupt service. we have redundancies built in plays. building in resiliency. this is understanding the forces of nature. we have access to the portal. really understanding that what our tunnel needs to do over the next 100 years, preparing for resiliency. we're partnering with the port to understand that work and to prepare for sea level rise. project delivery, strategically planned shutdowns.

this is so important that we continue to deliver small improvements by the maintenance away team, by our maintenance teams. even partnering on some of the bigger projects with contractors. it will require outages. it require a phasing of what a shutdown looks like. we want to make sure we're transport in communicating that.

proper replacement and repairs. establish a debris removal program and improve drainage systems. this is so important and not really thought of. not even seen by riders. we will go in and we'll have to

clear things around our crossovers and turnouts. if our base and our drainage systems are not clear and clean, we'll have standing water. we'll have build up of debris. we will have things that will actually degrade the life of the system. the hardware, the track, the switch machines, even things that will get into the control systems and train control systems. we must really start with the foundation of the subway. we pull things apart and making sure we have a solid base that our drainage systems are clean and clear and we keep up removing all the contaminates within the subway. we want to make sure that we have that in place. on the traction power side, again, cable upgrades. these are near 50 years of age.

we want to upgrade even capacity so we can operate three and four car trains. we want to be able to handle all the current that's needed for all the vehicles of the future. couple of other items. overheadline system. we have an overhead system. it's out on the surface. it's in the subway. was it a good idea to bring it in the subway? it was technology of the time. it's very confined space. we understand there's a lot of new technology out there. we will be having task order, a way of reviewing and understanding if we're going to offer new technologies such as overhead conductor rail. we talked to other agencies using this feature. it is a track or or less rigid system that's mounted to the

ceiling of the subway. we'll continue that work and upgrading fire and safety system. we have a facilities conditions assessment to look into all of our stations to understand the conditions around the station agents around the customers using the platform. what's the best environment. we'll deliver customer facing improvement like our wayfinding.

we're going to be having some really good feedback this fall from the central subway. we have brand new stations which are operating. hopefully we'll take that feedback, anything we can incorporate from those stations and lessons learned from improvements there if we can incorporate them, we'll be looking at adding them to the future. this is an estimate of essentially how much our program will cost us. $1.7 billion over the five investment areas. implement strategy is to move through our program management, continue community engagement. we will need funding strategy to round out what we need for this program. we'll continue making

improvements with our small team improvements during the fix it weeks and during any of our shutdowns that we have. we have several studies that will continue to move on. i'm pretty happy to talk about fix it week. we had 10 days. we wrapped that up last sunday. we took 10 days. we got to use 8 of those days. warriors had playoffs two of those days. we did not. we let service run the regular routine. just continuing our commitment to state of good repair and better muni metro. we're back to doing this on a quarterly basis.

next fix it week we do expect some time around july and august. we're working with our communications team to get that information out to the public. just to talk about several groups, just to cover it. our maintenance engineering team gets surveys on the trackway. our overheadlines team, the cable sliders at church and debose. track maintenance clearing up debris across the track way.

custodians continuing their work. signal maintenance teen working in the church relay room. they are doing lot of prep work before the communication-based train control. they are pulling out some of the old conventional system freeing up space for future installation of the new system. our mechanical systems team was doing some testing at the west portal station in that last photo. couple of items not in photos but to go over track wayside improvements, track switches. we had some rail replacement that occurred at the embarcadero double crossover. traction power improvements, overhead wire renewals track left and right at church station and the junction area.

about 1000 feet was replaced in that area. i want to say that all this work was done by the maintenance teams from maintenance away, buildings and grounds. even the sustainable street paint shop was out assisting with graffiti abatement. 90% of the work is planning and prepping for this. so it goes well. again, it's an entire team. the maintenance team would not be pulling this off if it wasn't

for our communications team, getting the word out there. letting folks know exactly how -- letting customers understand what the schedule is, what the alternatives are. transit management center, how they have command and control. we have so much work activity going on with numerous clearances. our field operations staff, trying to make sure that they close the stations at 9:30 p.m. so we can get started at 10:00. it really helped to have hours that we normally have. we barely have -- we operate subway 21 hours a day. at best we get three hours to do what we need to do. it's 10 miles fixed guideway, about 10 minutes a mile.

thank you to them and thank you for letting me speak today. >> chair borden: thank you so much. it's incredible. i do have a question about scheduling the work. i understand we need to get the work done. we have all those riders. i wonder how we balance trying to find times in conjunction to larger city wide events.

i wonder is there a way to do that around bigger city event where is areas are hot spots. i think it attracts more riders to us. i know this is more important to get this work done but thinking about how we schedule and how do you guys can do that. >> i think that's really good feedback. we're very focused trying to find the best gap in chase and baseball events. we need to make sure that we also don't lose sight of any

other major activities that the rail system needs to support. we're a city that is built on special events. it's so amazing to see them coming back. it's why this isn't like the third week of september every year. we're trying to find the best time. i will make sure that i share a feedback that we needed to. >> chair borden: director hinze? >> director hinze: i have some questions. i will try to go in order of the presentation. i will ask director borden question in a different way. i know we had to do this for week or 10 days.

how do you think communication went with the riders as a whole? chair borden cited one instance. i saw communication on social media. how do you think it went? >> i think it did meet my expectations especially given that this is the first time that we've done this pre-covid. we do want to have a consistent messaging and consistent service plan so that customers who are regular to the system learn what to expect during this time. really focus on having the bodies and the signage in place

to support people who might be taking it for the first time or might not have been on the system for a while and take it because they're going to the film festival or going to have dinner along the corridor. in general, the level of comments i thought was commensurate little bit lower what i would have expected given the inconvenience that we're asking people. we always try to do better in optimizing this area. >> director hinze: always good to hear. going back to ridership, i was excited to see the weekend ridership also --

i did want to ask about the recovery. >> i think for large part, some of our highest ridership routes

pre-pandemic that have been lagging in their recovery rate are those that had extremely high peaked rush hour travel and our routes that headed downtown. we can pretty confidently say lot of those missing riders that downtown office commute. i do want to really say i think we did have a lot of ridership throughout the pandemic even very early on. i tried to stay away from talking about work related trips. when we say that, we mean white collar commuters they think our system done an excellent job being very good and reliable system for people that work non-white collar downtown commute jobs. i would like to do a deep dive into the weekday ridership

trends seeing. it's been a much more complicated story and would take a bit more time than weekends to find the happy news. [ indiscernible ] >> director hinze: on the van ness all that look very promising. director tumlin did mention in the last meeting that staff was still kind of tinkering with the single timing to optimize this travel savings. >> there is work still being done before we turn on the signal priority. all of our vehicles are

equipped. we already have that same system on many other parts of the corridor. the golden gate staff shared with me at the press conference how excited they were that they made the investment in the same transponders. they're now getting signal priority on mission street in addition to what they will get on van ness. it's a system we have lot of experience with. it will be up and running on van ness soon. >> director hinze: perfect. thank you for this deep dive into the subway. the dashboard look amazing. i want to add, if you wanted to kind of -- i know when we made the decision to put the j back in the subway, the board asked you to track things that might

be going on or trends and problematic. did you wanted to address concerns about timing? >> i'd be happy to. we're going to be meeting with some of the folks who have been working closely to advocate for service on the j line. i think some of my correspondence fell a political flat which never my intent. we did at the beginning of that

correspondence, talk a lot about equity and ridership and some of the decisions that we're making and how we manage the service. every route that we have is important and we're committed to the j line being successful. also, kind of understanding that in it larger context of our rail system and of our service. the concerns that we've heard from members of the public have to do in part with the schedule. the schedule is not even 15 minutes on the j. we were trying to slide it in a little bit more elegantly into the subway. sometimes it's 12 or 13 minutes and sometimes it's 18 minutes.

that's something we can change when do our next schedule upload. i don't think that's detracting what is very high performance on the j line now. it's among the strongest in our system now. is there more that we could do at the terminal? potentially and we're looking to increase our staffing and always refine and improve our service management. we've had some folks from that

committee out actually logging the train. it mirrors what we're seeing as well. our preliminary evaluation is that we think we have met the board's expectations. >> director hinze: okay great. on the subway train, i think that the board feels it's an essential project and we're excited about getting the ball rolling.

i'm curious to know your idea of funding plan and how much -- [ indiscernible ] >> thank you for that question. the train control system is upwards of 5 or $600 million. it's an expensive project. it's one that we're scoping not to just be the initial investment but to include the annual incremental investments we need to keep it in a continuous state of good repair. it is a funded project in the c.i.p. it took a lot of creativity from our grants team. i do not know all of the sources that it's drawn from.

our philosophy in this c.i.p. was to get as many things into study and planning and design so we could compete for some of the more discretionary sources. >> director hinze: perfect, thank you. >> director tumlin: if i may add, the performance data that was included in the slide show presentation is being pushed out to our public dashboards. for any one who are interested go to sfmta.com/subway-performance-dat a. all of that data is being pushed out in realtime. it will allow you to track performance as we continue to make experimental changes.

you can simply google sfmta subway performance data and will come up. thank you. >> chair borden: director heminger? >> director heminger: thank you. just two questions. both of them touching on subjects director hinze introduced. my own view is that the train control system is the linchpin for improving the subway in general and the system in general. we can have a whole fleet of brand new cars which we will have. if we can't plug them in the system, that portions of those cars makes the system work, we really wasted lot of money. i thought i heard you say today that the r.f.p. might be coming to us in the summer. i thought you might have told us the spring few months ago when i asked the last time.

just a question about the health of the respective process and are we slipping and can we recover the slippage? >> we did slip a little bit on the grounds that we have to get it right. it's really complicated and it needs a lot of different people eyes and expertise on it. i had hopes to bring it late spring in may. i think we're going to be closer to the end of the summer. i believe that the time that we're spending now is going to save us delays in the future because we're clarifying and increasing what will potentially be the vendor accountability in the r.f.p. >> director heminger: as a reminder it might be helpful if you can provide the board with your latest schedule. if we're putting the thing out in the summer, what's your hope

of when to award that contract? >> i believe it's going to take about a 12-month period. we'll follow-up with a memo to the board so you know when we're targeting giving the r.f.p. to you. >> director heminger: thank you. the second question will be helpful if you could put up the queue slide. >> was that in reference to qanon? [ laughter ] >> director heminger: no, that's it farthest thing from my mind. this is what you do at a movie, you cue up. the question goes back to the debate about the j which is now in the subway. it appears that the cueing got a little worse even before the j service was restored. it's on an upward trajectory.

i thought the way we left the subject was let's put it back in and let's see how it works and at some point if it's breaking we got to revisit the decision. where is your horizontal line? that says i got to start worrying? don't tell me you already crossed it. [ laughter ] >> i don't know. >> director heminger: back in the bad old days in 2019, the cueing was horrendous. that can't be our milestone. >> director tumlin: ultimately that will come down to policy decision that you will need to make. we'll be providing you with recommendations. part of the challenges, there are many factors that interact to results in delay.

ultimately, one of the things we're concerned about is the subway being managed in order to accommodate known growth and change. we're expecting new development at ucsf. we have a subway that was designed to accommodate four car trains that we're running one and two car trains in. one of the key performance indicators that i'll be looking at is not just vehicle delay but passenger, capacity and a aligning passenger capacity with where changing demand lies.

>> director heminger: my sense will be that the train control system is still years away. we're going to have to grapple with this question with the train control system that we got. >> director tumlin: we can point out -- there are factors that can buy us some additional time. while we work on all of the

parts in order to get the best service. >> director heminger: thank you. >> vice chair eaken: director yekutiel? >> director yekutiel: you have couple of questions. the first one is about wifi. which we held as something that was put in when the subway was closed in 2020-2021. you and i have communicated. it does seem like it's not actually working. i tried it a couple of times. what's going on with the wifi? >> the wifi that we put in as we know we were putting it in in ad hoc basis. what we're finding is that people are streaming and doing

much heavier wifi use than it was designed for. it is impacting kind of everybody's ability to have a little bit of service that we have some users that are using it in a very intense way. they are working kind of incrementally to increase the capacity and also weighing decisions like should they limit the amount of -- like how people use the system to that people can do basic things like check their e-mail and send a text message versus watching tv. it's something that we are both trying to fix on the fly and envision what is the more permanent stable solution.

right now, the system is working as designed but is being used much more intensely. >> director tumlin: bear in mind that the wifi system is basically radio signals from the station themselves. it's not designed to be continuous through the tunnel. i found it to be about 95% reliable. really only in the station. >> director yekutiel: it works in the station. when you in the middle of the phone call or send an e-mail, it dies on you is it part of this plan? subway renewal, what would you say the timeline will be for it? >> we should probably capture it in -- in this plan.

we can follow-up with our chief technology officer and have her provide an update on the incremental investment and what we hope to get out of them and what limitations will be. >> director yekutiel: we're putting in over billion dollar in reliability and speed which makes sense to me. this other factor of experience is also very important. i do fee -- feel like, folks coming in here, if they realize they cannot use their technology while commuting. my fear they will choose other ways to commute. we lose them as potential new customers. they're not going to join our system. they need to be able to work on their way to work.

people have changed. i do hope that we can right size the investment to make sure that we are competing with all the other ways that people have to get around who need to get to work and commute. second part, there was one specific question i had. it was slide about reductions in bad trips. i don't think it was q. it was good trips and bad trips gone down. there was a reduction in the amount of bad trips from october to november 2021. i'm wondering it seemed pretty substantial. i wonder what that was about? then it went up again. bad trips went down.

>> director tumlin: you remember our first muni fix it week was when i had first started just before covid. i believe that that sharp decline is direct result of that investment that we made immediately before covid. >> director yekutiel: i'm talking about in 2021. we saw it went down in the fall and it picked back up again. >> director tumlin: there was no muni service at that time. you can ignore -- the subway was closed. >> director yekutiel: my last question is just kind of more general. i forget who i was talking to about this it was at the press conference for federal funding for the system. we were standing there. it really hurt me. i looked around,ism -- i was

behind the podium next to mayor breed, saw dirty tape to the wall and blinking light bulb and cracks in the pavement this. these are cosmetic things that have been there and someone missed it. maybe i spoke to you, i wonder if there's a team or spring cleaning of our subway, our part of the system for any other pieces that crack here or broken light bulb there and dirty tape. these little things do add up. i wonder if there's some kind of team that does that?

>> we definitely can form a group in our maintenance team along with our custodian staff building and grounds and go through and talk about and come up with some creative ways to do this during fix it weeks to actually pay attention to these things and address them. excellent feedback. [ indiscernible ] >> director tumlin: i love to have you down to talk to the custodians who were so proud of their work when we randomly showed up at 2:00 in the morning to talk to them. in addition to making the station a lot cleaner, we've been inventing a variety of new techniques to reach some of the the harder to reach parts the station that are impossible to

get to when the customers are there. because they're able to shut off certain electrical systems, we're able to get a lot more cleaning done than we can get done during the normal -- >> director yekutiel: amazing. the other cities seem to have more art in every station. i'm wondering if it's part of of this long range plan to renew our underground. there is some plan to bring more art to the stations that don't already have it underground. >> i think that's great feedback. there's opportunity within investment. >> director tumlin: we're also looking at partnership including teaming up with the plaza folks to welcome them to not only memorialize harvey milk outside the castro station and take advantage of the void of the station itself. we have some of the best wall space in san francisco.

we welcome community partnerships. >> director yekutiel: great. thank you. >> chair borden: director eaken? >> vice chair eaken: i will try to be brief. first just thank you so much for the breakdown of the data. i know it takes lot of work to do this analysis. it really help us to understand what's happening in a way that basic overview slide that you can kind of miss the story. i appreciate the data analysis. one question on slide 7 that's the recovery routes. you flagged 14, 9, 5, 49, 88. is that high ridership routes? >> almost all of our highest ridership routes? i have to look and see if there's anything. i think the 38 -- they have a

slower recovery on the 38. that's really the only other major one. >> director tumlin: you will notice the best performance is the 14 and 22 are lines that were never oriented in the financial district. their percentage recovery is much higher. >> vice chair eaken: on van ness, thank you so much for sharing the numbers. april 1st we did the ribbon cutting. it's great to see the numbers coming to us so quickly. i hope we're evaluating in addition to transit times any safety outcomes. i'm hoping we have reduced speed and produce safety only the corridor. i know that's a goal. on slide 22, this is the rbis

--principles for subway renewals as i look at these, these seem to make a lot of sense. i guess i'm wondering what's new if anything about these five compared to the way we've always done things. some of this seem like hopefully we'd always have been operating this way. i wonder if anything is specifically new. >> i don't believe a program of this scale can be successful if it doesn't have framing and an approach. while a lot of these may seem common sense, they are not necessarily how we've approach projects in the past. they take some of the lessons learned from our vehicle program where we were able within 15-year period to not only bring

that into a state of good repair but to create a continuous state of good repair program. the reason we're focused on these principles, we think that the only way to deliver this work successfully is to treat them kind of continuous north star. i think in terms of innovation, the lifecycle management is something that -- it's really a stretch goal for us in the subway. everything has been treated exclusively as age of an asset with no understanding that some portions of the subway are used continuously and some are used very infrequently. the train control system, we invested in it 20 years ago. we took a step back and are now

puzzled why it's not meeting our current modern-day needs. these types of things are really intended to infuse this program and make sure that it isn't just a capital project and it's a culture change. >> chair borden: director lai? >> director lai: i will make

some brief comments. really glad to see so much good news. i hope we can have a predictive exercise, not just a point in

time. i do think that there's quite a bit of unknown what that is going to look like. >> chair borden: any other questions? we'll move on to public comment. this is time for members of the public who like to comment on this item where we talked about the transit performance and the van ness b.r.t. mr. miller you can come up to the front. >> hello, good afternoon board members, i got to get back used to this. thanks for the presentation. few things i had about it. when we talk about like the sub ray reliability, i think there's like a few areas they are small

but they add up. i female -- i feel like they can be fixed easily. the operators will go back and check and clear ought the second car of the k trains. that takes even a minute. it slows down all of the service behind it as well. i feel like that's a big area that can be improved. in terms of bus service, i think the reliability has improved. lot of fewer missed trips. i think it can be confused. one line i ride the 18, pretty often, there's at least one bus missing that's every 20 minutes. it's not that i understand the driver shortage. what happens the other trips are move around to try to mitigate the gap. that can be very confusing because all of a sudden, the bus that i think is in 20 minutes is leaving in 10 minutes. i'm rushing to get out of the house. if that can be communicated

better to the riders, i think there will be less confusion. something else recently. rode 114 golden gate transit. i was shocked how people were making local trips. i think there's a lot more people who love to take muni. i was impressed by the weekend service ridership recovery. that could indicate that routes like the 76x --

>> thank you. i took the subway about a week ago. it was fine. i'm intrigued about some new possibilities such as a fixed overhead rail. i'm wondering if the higher performing lines are electric. i think people do care about the propulsion that we use for our vehicles. electric vehicles, they are just quieter and faster. i rode ac transit electric bus from the oakland airport couple of days ago.

once do you that, you don't want to go back. it's kind of like riding a tesla. you don't want to go back. i think we have to consider our people gravitating to the electric lines. i am thinking about people in the market corridor. it cost me less to use bart within san francisco than muni. i use bart to get from embarcadero to civic center. i'm probably going to use it to get back. it only cost me 75 cents while muni cost me $1.25. fare integration got to be part of getting people back on muni. i'm seeing good things. but we got lot of work to do. i'm still not seeing grand central terminal. i'm not still not seeing new york city. we're doing better. thank you.

>> chair borden: anyone else in the room that want to comment? we'll go to online callers. >> clerk: we have two callers. first caller. >> caller: i have two concerns. one is are you going to add more subway vehicles to the fleet? i think there needs to be more underground trains. that is one aspect of it. two, what are you going to do about the communication, command and control structure? that has to be vastly improved. operations have been flawed. that applies to the transportation.

company with you -- when are you going to restore the three jackson and the van ness. very important line. presentlily people who take muni are really inconvenienced about access to jackson street. these are my concerns. i am concerned about the expansion and restoration of vehicles -- [ indiscernible ] , thank you. >> caller: regarding the van ness b.r.t., i like to see the

numbers provided for the time savingses in minutes and not percentages that are presented currently. looking back to 1997, a book that muni used to publish with the timetables in it. there was really no savings in time. currently now. in 1997 they ranged from 19 to 20 minutes run time from market to north point. southbound in 1997 it was 18 to 19 minutes now it's 19 to 23 minutes according to the current schedule that's published. it's basically a wash. i will be interested knowing if growth contributed to this increase in run time, how much

did the development and growth in san francisco along that corridor pay for the cost of b.r.t. that we have now. again, the transportation sustainability fee in that. i took a look at randomly the schedule on the pictures on the 49 line. looking at 22nd and mission, trimble and mission just strictly random. i noticed a trend that there were two buses either two or three minutes behind and then there was anywhere from 10 to 12 or 15 minute gap for the third bus. i don't understand why that

along the mission corridor -- >> clerk: that concludes all the callers. >> chair borden: that concludes public comment. that concludes this item. great presentation and very exciting. that take us to our next item. >> clerk: discussion and vote and conduct a closed session council with league counsel. >> chair borden: anyone like to comment on our decision to go into closed session. they may do so now. anyone online? >> clerk: no callers online. >> chair borden: directors. is there a motion? >> motion to go into closed session. >> second. >> chair borden: please call the roll. [roll call vote]

the motion passes 7-0. we will go into >> clerk: we're waiting for confirmation from sfgov tv. we'll let you know. >> chair borden: we're reconvening open session for the may 3rd meeting. >> clerk: item 13, announcement of closed session. the board met in closed session to discuss the cases with the city attorney. no action was taken. item 14. motion to disclose or not disclose information discussed in closed session. >> motion not to disclosed.

>> chair borden: please call the roll. [roll call vote] motion passes 6-0. this concludes business before you today. >> chair borden: thank you so much. meeting adjourned.

>> i don't think you need to be an expert to look around and see the increasing frequency of fires throughout california. they are continuing at an ever-increasing rate every summer, and as we all know, the drought continues and huge shortages of water right now. i don't think you have to be an expert to see the impact. when people create greenhouse gases, we are doing so by different activities like burning fossil fuels and letting off carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and we also do this with food waste. when we waste solid food and leave it in the landfill, it puts methane gas into the atmosphere and that accelerates the rate at which we are warming our planet and makes all the

effects of climate change worse. the good news is there are a lot of things that you can be doing, particularly composting and the added benefit is when the compost is actually applied to the soil, it has the ability to reverse climate change by pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and into the soil and the t radios. and there is huge amount of science that is breaking right now around that. >> in the early 90s, san francisco hired some engineers to analyze the material san francisco was sending to landfill. they did a waste characterization study, and that showed that most of the material san francisco was sending to landfill could be composted. it was things like food scraps, coffee grounds and egg shells and sticks and leaves from gardening. together re-ecology in san francisco started this curbside

composting program and we were the first city in the country to collect food scraps separately from other trash and turn them into compost. it turns out it was one of the best things we ever did. it kept 2.5 million tons of material out of the landfill, produced a beautiful nutrient rich compost that has gone on to hundreds of farms, orchards and vineyards. so in that way you can manage your food scraps and produce far less methane. that is part of the solution. that gives people hope that we're doing something to slow down climate change. >> i have been into organic farming my whole life. when we started planting trees, it was natural to have compost from re-ecology. compost is how i work and the soil biology or the microbes feed the plant and our job as regenerative farmers is to feed

the microbes with compost and they will feed the plant. it is very much like in business where you say take care of your employees and your employees will take carolinas of your customers. the same thing. take care of the soil microbes and soil life and that will feed and take care of the plants. >> they love compost because it is a nutrient rich soil amendment. it is food for the soil. that is photosynthesis. pulling carbon from the atmosphere. pushing it back into the soil where it belongs. and the roots exude carbon into the soil. you are helping turn a farm into a carbon sink. it is an international model. delegations from 135 countries have come to study this program. and it actually helped inspire a new law in california, senate bill 1383. which requires cities in california to reduce the amount of compostable materials they send to landfills by 75% by

2025. and san francisco helped inspire this and this is a nation-leading policy. >> because we have such an immature relationship with nature and the natural cycles and the carbon cycles, government does have to step in and protect the commons, which is soil, ocean, foryes, sir, and so forth. -- forest, and so fors. we know that our largest corporations are a significant percentage of carbon emission, and that the corporate community has significant role to play in reducing carbon emissions. unfortunately, we have no idea and no requirement that they disclose anything about the carbon footprint, the core operation and sp360 stands for the basic notion that large corporations should be transparent about the carbon footprint. it makes all the sense in the world and very common sense but is controversial. any time you are proposing a policy that is going to make

real change and that will change behavior because we know that when corporations have to disclose and be transparent and have that kind of accountability, there is going to be opposition. >> we have to provide technical assistance to comply with the state legislation sb1383 which requires them to have a food donation program. we keep the edible food local. and we are not composting it because we don't want to compost edible food. we want that food to get eaten within san francisco and feed folks in need. it is very unique in san francisco we have such a broad and expansive education program for the city. but also that we have partners in government and nonprofit that are dedicated to this work. at san francisco unified school district, we have a sustainability office and educators throughout the science

department that are building it into the curriculum. making it easy for teachers to teach about this. we work together to build a pipeline for students so that when they are really young in pre-k, they are just learning about the awe and wonder and beauty of nature and they are connecting to animals and things they would naturally find love and affinity towards. as they get older, concepts that keep them engaged like society and people and economics. >> california is experiencing many years of drought. dry periods. that is really hard on farms and is really challenging. compost helps farms get through these difficult times. how is that? compost is a natural sponge that attracts and retains water. and so when we put compost around the roots of plants, it holds any moisture there from rainfall or irrigation. it helps farms make that corner and that helps them grow for food. you can grow 30% more food in

times of drought in you farm naturally with compost. farms and cities in california are very hip now to this fact that creating compost, providing compost to farms helps communities survive and get through those dry periods. >> here is the thing. soil health, climate health, human health, one conversation. if we grow our food differently, we can capture all that excess carbon in the atmosphere and store it in unlimited quantities in the soil, that will create nutrient dense foods that will take care of most of our civilized diseases. so it's one conversation. people have to understand that they are nature. they can't separate. we started prowling the high plains in the 1870s and by the 1930s, 60 year, we turned it into a dust bowl. that is what ignorance looks like when you don't pay attention to nature. nature bats last. so people have to wake up.

wake up. compost. >> it is really easy to get frustrated because we have this belief that you have to be completely sustainable 24/7 in all aspects of your life. it is not about being perfect. it is about making a change here, a change there in your life. maybe saying, you know what? i don't have to drive to that particular place today. today i am going to take the bus or i'm going to walk. it is about having us is stainable in mind. that is -- it is about having sustainability in mind. that is how we move the dial. you don't have to be perfect all the time. >> san francisco has been and will continue to be one of the greener cities because there are communities who care about protecting a special ecosystem and habitat. thinking about the history of the ohlone and the native and indigenous people who are stewards of this land from that history to now with the ambitious climate action plan we

just passed and the goals we have, i think we have a dedicated group of people who see the importance of this place. and who put effort into building an infrastructure that actually makes it possible. >> we have a long history starting with the gold rush and the anti-war activism and that is also part of the environmental movement in the 60s and 70s. and of course, earth day in 1970 which is huge. and i feel very privileged to work for the city because we are on such a forefront of environmental issues, and we get calls from all over the world really to get information. how do cities create waste programs like they do in san francisco. we are looking into the few which you are and we want innovation. we want solutions.

the tenderloin is home to families, immigrants, seniors, merchants, workers and the housed and unhoused who all deserve a thriving neighborhood to call home. the tenderloin initiative was launched to improve safety, reduce crime, connect people to services and increase investments in the neighborhood. as city and community-based partners, we work daily to make these changes a reality. we invite you to the tenderloin history, inclusivity make this neighborhood special. >> we're all citizens of san francisco and we deserve food,

water, shelter, all of those things that any system would. >> what i find the most fulfilling about being in the tenderloin is that it's really basically a big family here and i love working and living here. >> [speaking foreign language] >> my hopes and dreams for the tenderloin are what any other community organizer would want for their community, safe, clean streets for everyone and good operating conditions for small businesses. >> everything in the tenderloin is very good. the food is very good. if you go to any restaurant in san francisco, you will feel like oh, wow, the food is

great. the people are nice. >> it is a place where it embraces all walks of life and different cultures. so this is the soul of the tenderloin. it's really welcoming. the. >> the tenderloin is so full of color and so full of people. so with all of us being together and making it feel very safe is challenging, but we are working on it and we are getting there. good morning everyone. i'm san francisco mayor london breed. and today i'm here to talk about laguna honda hospital and i'm joined by the director of department of public health dr. grant colfax as well as the

director or laguna honda michael phillips and located in supervisor melgar and we also have a representative from our speaker of the house nancy pelosi's office, her director, dan bernal. we're here to talk specifically about what we know have been challenges at laguna honda hospital. for over 150 years, this facility has been a beacon of hope. it's been a place that has cared for those who could not care for themselves and, in fact, it has survived the 1906 earth quake and during the pandemic, there were those who thought laguna honda would be similar to many of these care facilities around the country that we would see covid spread

rampedly and people die in significant numbers and although we lost six people at laguna honda due to covid, we worked really hard to ensure the safety of the patients there. the people who worked there, the doctors, the nurses, the counselors, they were essential workers and they showed up to work every day to care for these patients and san francisco was a model in how these skilled nursing facilities can do it right as it relates to protecting patients especially during covid. we were very proud. and i had no doubts because i saw this care firsthand for over ten years as my grandmother who suffered from dementia, this is where she lived. this is where the nurses made her smile. of this is where they painted her nails and did her hair and made sure even though she was in a facility where there wasn't much she could do that there was still a little bit of fun or excitement in her life.

i've seen time and time again how these nurses would make arrangements to take these patients to experience things outside the facility so they can feel alive again. this work is hard work. and sometimes people get exhausted. and as a result, things may not necessarily happen according to code. what we've seen in laguna honda hospital with a notice that we received is a request to make things right. and we have been well on our way to making things right, to improving the conditions, doing things we didn't do before. so, for example, there was some concerns about things getting into laguna honda that should not come into laguna honda and, in fact, part of the solution has been to make changes to how people enter. family members, visitors alike. and at one point when i went

into laguna honda to see my grandmother, i would just sign in, put who i was going to see and room number. unfortunately, because of the challenges we're experiencing, that has all had to change. and now, dr. colfax will talk a little bit about what those changes are, but now it means significant changes to laguna honda, who goes in, who goes out. how we provide patient care, how we provide support. in order to address some of the challenges that existed before, we've made significant changes. we knew that there would be state and federal officials at laguna honda this week to pay very close attention to everything that we were doing and making recommendations in order to ensure that we are first and foremost protecting the patients. making sure that they are safe. making sure that no harm comes to them and also supporting and

uplifting the staff. laguna honda is a special place and, in fact, during the visit, what was seen were a number of things that we know can be corrected. someone who may not have taken off their gloves in a timely manner. signage in a needs to be posted to ensure that people are away of what they're walking into. some things that in comparison to a couple months ago are things that are not only minor but can also be so we still have a long road ahead of us. there's still work to be done. but this pandemic has demonstrated not only to the

city, but to the country what we are capable of doing when we focus on insuring life safety of the patients of this facility and the employees. the people who were essential workers. the people who were working to exhaustion to take care of the patients of laguna honda in some cases at the expense of their own family. we know how valuable this facility is and our plan is to do everything we can in light of recent events to ensure that it remains open. that it remains a place of refuge for those who cannot care for themselves. that it remains in the shape that we know it needs to be to continue to do that. and here to talk more specifically about where we are, what's actually happening at laguna honda and what we plan to do to continue to ensure that this facility remains a viable facility for

those who need care in this capacity is our director of the department of public health dr. grant coltax. colfax. >> good morning, and thank you mayor breed for your support of laguna hospital and the recognition of the vital role it plays for caring for san franciscans most in need. we saw covid devastate nursing homes at the beginning of the pandemic and feared that might happen at the largest skilled nursing facility in the nation. but laguna honda rose to the occasion and served as the national leader for our covid-19 response. for over 150 years, laguna honda's been a pillar of our health care system here in san francisco. it serves as a safety net for those with complex medical and

behavioral health needs who are at low or very low income. it is indeed a great pride of our city. while we are in a challenging situation now, the most important thing is that laguna honda is not going anywhere. we will continue to be an excellent place to receive excellent care. we will continue to be an excellent place to work. and we will continue to be a vital part of the city's health care system. the center for medicare and medicaid services known as cms gave laguna honda notice on march 30th that if we did not come into full regulatory compliance by april 14th, we would face termination in the medicare, medicaid program. this is very important because the overwhelming majority of laguna honda patient care is funded through this program.

despite great efforts by the laguna honda community, both staff and residents to improve safety measures related to the initial challenge of prohibited items on campus during the survey revisit this week unrelated and technical infractions were found. these infractions were primarily related to hygiene, documentation, and infection prevention and control. as a result, cms has moved to terminate laguna honda from the medicare, medicaid program. now laguna honda is a large and complex organization. i know that given more time, the team could have shown compliance. none of the infractions found this week would have led determination had it not been for the organization running out of time to show compliance. importantly, laguna honda did

not lose its license and remains a licensed skilled nursing facility. but we take these findings seriously and know that responding to them and working with our regulatory partners, laguna honda will be a stronger organization. we look forward to showing this to our regulatory partners in the near future as we begin the process of re-applying to the cms program. i want to end by acknowledging the hard work of laguna honda staff and show my gratitude to laguna honda patients and their families for entrusting us with their care. and now it's my pleasure to introduce the laguna honda chief executive officer michael phillips. thank you. >> good morning everyone. thank you, mayor london breed and thank you dr. colfax for your leadership and commitment

to laguna honda hospital. it is an honor to serve laguna honda patients and it's an honor to work alongside laguna honda staff. this is a remarkable institution with a great history and a great future. i know determination may cause anxiety, but i want you to know we will do everything it takes to make this right. i'm confident that we will meet the regulatory requirements and the high standards that we set for ourselves. for those of you unfamiliar with the process, to where we got today and explain our plan of action. laguna honda like all skilled nursing facilities has regular inspections by the state known as surveys and it has an

obligation to report unusual occurrences. this is always the goal to improve the facility and the care that we provide to our patients. laguna honda reported two nonfatal overdoses to the state. this led to an extended survey in october of 2021. during the state's first revisit program. one staff member did not follow protocols related to prohibited substances. this meant immediately that we were not in compliance. on march 16th, the state returned for a second revisit survey. during the second revisit, we discovered that a patient was

smoking in a communal bathroom and another patient who was on oxygen had a lighter in their possession. this also meant that we were not in compliance. yesterday, we were informed that we did not pass a final survey attempt due to the findings that mayor breed spoke of earlier. these were unrelated to the issue of quad and illicit substances. and patient safety. and i want to make three things perfectly clear today. first, we take these findings very seriously and we will

address them immediately. secondly, laguna honda is here to stay for our patients, we will continue to serve you and for our staff, you will continue to work at laguna honda and thirdly, laguna honda hospital continues to be a licensed facility and is meeting all requirements of licensure on a california regulations. as we work diligently to meet all requirements, laguna honda will continue to receive medicare, medicaid payments over the next 30 days. and due to the size of our facility, we will work with cms to further extend the 30 day payment period. and most importantly, we will immediately begin the process of reapplying for participation in the cms program. in fact, staff are already

preparing for the recertification process and this will take place in the very near future. we look forward to recertifying with medicare and in the meantime, we will continue demonstrating our unwaivering commitment to patient safety. the work taking place right now will ensure the longevity of laguna honda hospital and make our organization a stronger one and we will continue to serve the needs of san franciscans most in need. thank you very much. we'll try to answer any questions. >> thank you, mr. phillips. my name is myrna melgar. i am the supervisor for district 7. i have the great honor of representing this district where laguna honda is located. district seven like many other districts in san francisco has a large aging population and

laguna honda is our jewel. it serves both who are most at need, the indigent, the elderly, and it does it with great love. it has decades of love from the staff, from our city to take care of folks who need that. we are here as representatives of the commitment of the values that san francisco has of making sure that we come into compliance that these findings will be corrected and i am so grateful for the leadership of mayor london breed and dr. colfax to address these issues immediately to make sure that the staff have the proper training and to recognize that despite being in a pandemic for the past two years, staff have stepped up to implement new protocols as mayor breed talked about and also new

hydroprotocols that are now being implemented so i'm thankful for the city all coming together to support this wonderful institution to ensure that for years to come, families will not be separated and that we will continue to have a top notch facility that is compliant with medicare and with all our state regulations. thank you so much for your interest in being here and i also am grateful and will now bring up dan bernal who is here representing speaker pelosi's office. thank you, mr. bernal. >> thank you, supervisor melgar. chief of staff in san francisco for congresswoman and speaker of the house nancy pelosi. while speaker pelosi could not be here today, she asked me to protect the health of all san franciscans for your dedication and your care for the staff and the residents of laguna honda hospital and for so eloquently

leading and sharing your personal experience and your family's experience with laguna honda. it's so critical at this time. so thank you, mayor breed speaker pelosi laguna honda has long been the pillar of health. at this very moment, this indispensable institution is ensuring that hundreds of patients with complex medical and behavioral health conditions can get the care they need regardless of their financial means. and during the pandemic, the dedicated staff of the hospital has been outstanding in controlling outbreaks and keeping its vulnerable patients safe from the virus. it is unfathomable to support life-saving programs for some of our most vulnerable san franciscos especially as we continue to be threatened by

the pandemic. this is why it is both urgent and essential that city, state, and national officials work together to help address areas of concern and protect this crucial health care provider. my office is working closely with mayor breed and the biden administration to support laguna honda's devoted staff and ensure that the hospital can address its issues, come into full compliance and continue to serve our community for decades to come. thank you. >> thank you, dan, for being here today and thank you to everyone for their support. i also want to express that we in addition to the work that we are doing directly at laguna honda, we have had significant support from our congresswoman jackie spear as well and so we appreciate her as well as our other sfral and state officials

who have reached out to work with us to ensure that laguna honda is protected and safe for the people that we are here to serve and at this point, we are open to answering questions related to laguna honda. >> in funding, how long is that gap. >> we don't at this time believe there will be a gap in funding and i'll let mr. phillip answer that because as he explained in his remarks. we still funding for the next 30 days and expect reimbursement for those patients through this program. but we're in the process of submitting an application. and we expect that with the particular concerns that have been expressed, those things

are going to be fixed immediately. and so as a result, we expect that our application will be approved and we should not see any gaps in funding and is there anything you want to add, mr. phillip to that? >> i think that's correct. a process where there is an immediate 30-day extension of payment. they have also indicated, we haven't received signature assurance, but they have indicated there is a possibility for us to have a further extension of our payment. and i think not only for laguna honda but for cms as well, there's a strong consideration for our patient population and i think they will work with us to do everything within their power to ensure that we have the funding that we need until, you know, we proceed with our

recertification. >> [ indiscernible ] >> yes. and i don't want to minimize the findings that c.m.s. found over the last few weeks and last couple of days specifically. but all these things that were found we are.

>> [ indiscernible ] >> thank you for that question. as you know, laguna honda is a very large facility and with over 700 patients and so we receive a lot of visitors for those patients. we recently implemented a process whereby a visitor is screened at the entrance. we have the san francisco sheriff's department personnel providing those screenings and visitor belongings are either visitors can take the belongings back to their vehicles or they can place them in lockers that we provide for them that are secured and cleaned between use. and it's a very orderly process. we've had it in place now for

about a week. the first couple of days were, of course, you know, we had to work through some issues, but by the second day, things were just fine and i think patients and families really understand the necessity for doing this. so everyone is working with us, you know, to implement these new procedures. >> will it be for staff as well in terms of what they're allowed to come in with? >> there won't be changes for staff, we do have processes for staff where we have to ensure, you know, covid related processes and protocols, but otherwise, this won't apply to our staff. >> all right. thank you very much.

>> i went through a lot of struggles in my life, and i am blessed to be part of this.

i am familiar with what people are going through to relate and empathy and compassion to their struggle so they can see i came out of the struggle, it gives them hope to come up and do something positive. ♪ ♪ i am a community ambassador.

we work a lot with homeless, visitors, a lot of people in the area. >> what i like doing is posting up at hotspots to let people see visibility. they ask you questions, ask you directions, they might have a question about what services are available. checking in, you guys. >> wellness check. we walk by to see any individual, you know may be sitting on the sidewalk, we make sure they are okay, alive. you never know. somebody might walk by and they are laying there for hours. you never know if they are alive. we let them know we are in the area and we are here to promote safety, and if they have somebody that is, you know, hanging around that they don't

want to call the police on, they don't have to call the police. they can call us. we can direct them to the services they might need. >> we do the three one one to keep the city neighborhoods clean. there are people dumping, waste on the ground and needles on the ground. it is unsafe for children and adults to commute through the streets. when we see them we take a picture dispatch to 311. they give us a tracking number and they come later on to pick it up. we take pride. when we come back later in the day and we see the loose trash or debris is picked up it makes you feel good about what you are doing. >> it makes you feel did about escorting kids and having them feel safe walking to the play area and back. the stuff we do as ambassadors

makes us feel proud to help keep the city clean, helping the residents. >> you can see the community ambassadors. i used to be on the streets. i didn't think i could become a community ambassador. it was too far out there for me to grab, you know. doing this job makes me feel good. because i came from where a lot of them are, homeless and on the street, i feel like i can give them hope because i was once there. i am not afraid to tell them i used to be here. i used to be like this, you know. i have compassion for people that are on the streets like the homeless and people that are caught up with their addiction because now, i feel like i can give them hope. it reminds you every day of

where i used to be and where i am at now. all right, good afternoon. welcome to the health commission meeting of tuesday may 3. secretary, would you please call the roll? [roll call] i have a declaration based

on the may. welcome to the health committee meeting. it's held in room 400 and also online. also available via webex. that information is available on the website. this is the number for public comment 415-655-0003. access code 2455-112-0437. that information is listed on page four of the agenda posted online. before we begin i'd like to remind everyone present that all health and safety protocols must be adhered to at all times. that means wearing a mask. failure to adhere to the rules might result in your removal from the online. we appreciate your cooperation

in the interest of everyone's health and safety. the hand sanitizer stations are available at the entrance. we welcome the public's participation during the public comment period. there will before a opportunity during general public comments. you will be able to comment during each action item. public comment will be taken in person and call in to webex. they will take public comment first from the people in the meeting and then those attending the meeting remotely. if you are attending the meeting in person you should submit a public comment card. along with federal, state, and local law this is among city employees and others and will not be tolerated. public comment is per meanted within the jurisdiction of the

health commission. the next meeting is on may 17th. thank you for joining us. >> it's my privilege to read the land acknowledgements. >> the san francisco health acknowledgements of the original inhas inhabitant. they never forgot their responsibility as caretakers of the place and people residing in their territory. as gusts we recognize we benefit from working on their traditional homeland. we wish to pay respects by acknowledging the an assess n assess ancestors of te

community. as we will have a resolution recognizing asian heritage month. we call this meeting to order with congressman and former transportation secretary that passed away today. i had the privilege to work with him for many years during my time working with the congress. he's one of the only people for whom an airport was named while he was leaving and that speaks to his leadership. i'd like to ask if any of the commissioners have anything they would like to say about mr. manetta pon his upos passing. i'd like to say a few words in honor of congressman and secretary norm. he was an elected official for

the san jose and silicon valley area. certainly, his impact and presence went far beyond san jose area to touch the lives of everyone in the united states as a representative of congress as well as commerce secretary of president clinton and bush. jermaine to our work here at the health commission many people are not aware but should know the congressman was part of the disadvantage health minority improvement act that was the first time any legislation was geared towards directing the federal government to acknowledge and

put resources in place of the disadvantaged and disparities of all i'd like to say his legacy is unmatched and serve as a beckon of hope thank you. >> thank you commissioner. do we have comments from any other commissioners? we have approve val of april 19, 2022. commissioners you have minutes

before you do we have amendments or motion to approve. motion to approve. >> i second. >> chair can you call the role. >> first we'll go for public comment. press star three so we can recognize you. seeing no hands commissioners i'll move ahead with the roll call. [roll call]. >> i don't have a picture can you hear me? >> yes. [roll call]. >> the item passes, thank you. >> moving onto item number three the directors report.

we have the director of health dr. grant colfax. >> good afternoon commissioners. thank you i'll give the covid-19 update subsequent to the brief report. i wanted to highlight for the commissioners we spoke about this at the last health commission meeting we have made sure the hospitals are certified in the medicare/medicaid program and we obtained outside experts that will guide through the recertification process. the team we put together through the current challenge and hospital is stronger than ever. i wanted to highlight for the commissioners that on

wednesday, april 28, that was the 100th day of the tenderloin linkage center known as the tenderloin center or thc. it's amazing the work that's been say come accomplished there. it includes 35,000 visits and averaging 400 people per day. just amazing work with the team. i'd like to thank the behavior health team that scaled this up and with unprecedented speed. on another note, focusing on developing future scientist and hopefully future department of public health folks. the department of public health branch participated in

the 2022 area science festival at oracle park. we worked with the department of homeland security to develop an online scavenger hunt competition. there was a lot of focus on authenticating honey. that's athing. one key thing was for the participants to work between synthetic honey verse organic hundred, verses fake hundred. they are working hard to inspire young people to go into science and public health. it sounds like a fun and interesting way. thank you. >> thank you director colfax. director do you have any public comments on the item? >> if you would like to make

any comments press star 3 now so we can recognize you i'm noting the folks in the room. >> all right, commissioners. any comments for director follow colfax. commissioner i'd like to congratulate you for participating in that showed up. the oracle was very positive just want to say kudos to all that put it together and participated. >> thank you, commissioner. any other questions or comments from the directors report? >> commissioners, just for everyone to know. i'm the only person that can see hands up. i'll have to let you know if there is a hand up. i see no hands.

>> okay, moving onto it next item which is the covid-19 update. back to dr. grant colfax. >> thank you, commissioners. we'll start with the slides and i'll go through them fairly quickly you have seen these before so they are mainly updated. >> i can see it but others can't. can you stop sharing. sorry, we are still working out the kinks.

perhaps i'll go through the update verbally. as the slides come up we can go through them. commissioners with regard to san francisco covid-19 cases per 100,000 resident. we are seeing an increase in cases compared to where we were a few weeks ago they are currently at 28 cases per 100,000. significantly higher than our lower rates in early march which we got down to 8 per 100,000 cases. an increase and that's consistent with the subvariants that are more

contagious than omicron and the increased activity we see across the region. san francisco is not alone in seeing the increases. we have seen increases across most of the rest of the country especially the east coast. what we are experiencing is what we see in other counties in the bay area. in terms of covid-19 cases and deaths. we have 129,000 cases of covid-19 diagnosed in san francisco. this is clearly an under underestimate. people at home are not necessarily being counted. 862 deaths due to covid-19. those were mostly during the surges that you are very familiar with at this point. our covid-19 deaths by month

remain relatively low for the month of march and april. of course, the deaths were higher during our winter omicron surge. more than the prior winter surge before vaccines and boosters are widely available. in terms of case rate by vaccination status, again, these vaccines continue to show their effect in some level of protection. the case rate per 100,000 among people who received their initial vaccines is 26.1. people who are not vaccinated the case rate is very high at 56.0. in future presentations i'll start with the number of hospitalizations and intensive care unit because that's the metrics that's important more

than the case overall given our high vaccine coverage and booster rate. despite the high rates i talked about the 28 per 1 hundred thousand we have a total of 47 individuals in san francisco hospitals with covid-19. that includes people that are hospitalized for covid-19 complications as well as covid-19 was found incidentally on testing. we have, a total of six patients across san francisco hospitals in the intensive care unit. this reflects our relatively high immunity levels in the community as well as the fact that we have a high booster rate. in terms of vaccination at this time we are at 84%.

having received their first series of vaccinations. we are at 71% of all residents boosted and among the 65 to avenue year-olds 85% have been boosted and 88% boosted. just to be clear, that's among people, that booster is the first initial booster. we will provide data soon on the percentage of people who received the second booster. so, in summery, our case rate and number of hospitalizations have increased but the hospitalizations, specifically numbers have not deceased to the degree we are concerned about including i cu capacity. we are really focusing on everybody being covid-19 ready. stay up-to-date on boosters, now how to reach a medical

professional. we want to make sure people are accessing the important retro virals. they are so important in preventing severe illness and hospitalization. we would like to encourage people to keep a supply of rapid test kits on hand and use their healthcare povieder as provider as a so. of course the federal government they can be accede. masks we strongly recommend high quality masks like kn-95. also people should stay informed with trusted information including sf. gov covid-19 site. again, second boosters, we want to make sure people have access to boosters. they are widely available across the city. the cdc recommends second

boosters for those 65 and older. over 50 with underline medical conditions, and immunocompromised individuals. sorry about the slide malfunction. i hope that provides enough data to keep you up-to-date and dr. suzanne phillip, our health officer is at the meeting to provide additional information if i'm not able to answer any questions. thank you commissioners, that concludes my presentation. >> the slides will be on the website so folks can see the data that was just reviewed and get access to it. >> thank you director. >> folks on the line if you would like to make a comment about the covid-19 update press star 3 now. i see no hands commissioners.

>> commissioners any comments or comments? >> commissioner chow has his hand up. i'm finally back seeing you all i wanted to get clarification because i missed part of that, director colfax. of the 47 in the hospital were these all admitted for covid-19 or with other reasons. >> thank you, it's a combination of both. some people were admitted for covid-19 and others were admitted for other stuff. we didn't have the capacity to breakdown the numbers. we have watched the i icu numbers. again, i don't have specific

breakdowns. it inbe cludes icu and overall hospitalizations. >> thank you, that's very helpful. it's also been helpful with dr. phillip and all of you emphasizing the importance of hospitalization. today the l.a. times scared a number of people. i got calls about covid-19 going up 30%. i did write back to one of my professional colleagues that that percentages are not the answer today. we are at a low point and the real key was hospitalization. he wrote back and said gee, thank you. that's important. within our profession we have people who didn't understand what public health should be following. when they see that they are concerned you will put back in lockdowns and getting the same

information. thank you. >> thank you commissioner chow. any other questions or comments? >> i see no other hands. we can move to the next item which is general public comment. >> folks on the line this is the time to make comments about something not on the agenda. please press star 3. to make a comment about something not on the agenda today. we have a resolution honoring athan heritage month. we have toni rucker. >> good afternoon commissioners. it's a pleasure to be with you

this afternoon. i'm dr. tony rucker. they are honored and excited to recognize across the city and nation. we celebrate asian american month. there is no single story of the api experience but diversity of the contributions to san francisco's history and culture straightening the role as a national transformative leader. it's not the api culture but history across the state throughout the nation. this is a history that we recognize and we celebrate the contributions of the asian and pacific islanders in the marketplace, in the industry

and in culture, art, law, science, technology, and of course the public sector. when you think about including asian pacific islanders throughout the pandemic they serve to continuously, they are still there on the front line severing as physicians, nurses, first responders, healthcare workers, teachers. asian and pacific islanders in science and health and the office of health equity is excited and honored that we are here to honor them not only this month but throughout the year. we would like asian pacific islander heritage month. we would like to draw one of those straights they recognize in despite of the straight and

contribution of the asian pacific icelanders the community continue to face barriers. these are barriers that impact economic equity. educational entertainment. something is basic and guaranteed for everyone, pub person nal safety. there was an amazing and unfortunately ride and anti-asian harassment. in the office of health equity stand with strategying with and organizing asian pacific islanders in the health department in the county of san francisco. we'll organize with our colleagues and community. the office of health equity we will look for opportunities to heal together, learn together, and to fight together against

the racism and xenophobia that still exists. we are working and improving on it in the city and nation. when we come together, that's what this is about. acknowledging, coming together, and strategizing and organizing against systemic issues. the office is different sections across the department. we are working with the work force and express asian pacific islanders health and social equitities. they organize with our office to acknowledge the learning projects and learning activities across the work force. in collaboration for groups.

this is acknowledgement. this is why we are so honored to celebrate. the city with the nation. we are recognizing and include and understand history. we can learn about the current state that we are living in and develop collaborative opportunities and en enable us. we will document this at the office. we will keep the information and we will have that available for the work force. we will have this available for the community. we are able to show and demonstrate and learn together and include together. for the health equity and working and acknowledging

present day that the asian and pacific islander are facing exclusion, racism, and xenophobia. they are able to come together and learn together. they will come together. dpa is honored this is our opportunity to celebrate the month. this is something we make the hallmark and bedrock. it's excited and celebrating and honoring asian and pacific islander heritage month. we'll do that in honor of you. we acknowledge and celebrate the opportunity we have. thank you so much. >> thank you dr. ruker. now we'll go to some

commissioners. >> thank you dr. ruker so much for your words and heartfelt efforts and support you are providing the asian pacific islander community. not just for this month but i look forward to seeing the fruits of the office of health equity leadership in this regard. i'm honored to be reading the first part of the resolution of the health commission. it's resolution 22-42 to honor a asian, and pacific islander heritage month. celebrate the significant contribution of asian american and pacific islanders to the history of the united states. they celebrate each may it's

composed of many ethnicities. the asian american population than any other racial ethics groups for the past decade. this is between 2017. the asian pacific american month. japanese immigrants arrived on may seventh. first transcontinental railroad. there was contributions to

chinese immigrants. where section 102 of title 36 united states code designates may as asian and pacific american heritage month. we ask the president to issue a proximation calling on the people of the united states to observe the month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities. 2022 marks specific milestones including the chinese exclusion act passed in 1882 which was the first united states law to prevent members of a specific national group from immigranting to the country to repeal the chinese exclusion passed in 1943. it occurred at the same time. they permitted a quo a qua of 105 chinese. the passage of the immigration

act of 1965. this is for the integration act of 1990 of the most comprehensive sieve change. the act established flexible worldwide caps. in 2011 through 2012 the house of representatives condemned the chinese exclusion act. the 467th anniversary of presidential proximation dated february 19, 1976, where president ford incidence

incarcerated chinese. the house of representatives found the first asian american to congress. the 76th anniversary made by the act of july 2, 1946, known as the lose seller act of 1946. they imgreated to the united states and became naturalized citizens. the 76th anniversary of appropriation recession act and the supplemental surplus decision of 1946 that stripped them from ability to serve in armed forces. 101st an anniversary of an

american film futuring an asian american woman. also the 121st anniversary in the united states. now turn to commissioner chow. >> thank you, it's my privilege to participate and introduce this important resolution. i will continue note of all by all means. we are on sight today. we are at asian american and pacific islanders and specifically contribution. in the united states armed forces including one daniel k. a metal of honor and presidential metal of freedom

recipient. he was enlisted in the united states in 1962. he was the highest rank government official in the united states at that time. number two, the first asian american member of congress elected in 1955. i think we mentioned him earlier. number three mink. the first woman of color and asian american woman that was elected to congress in 1965. number four senator fall, the first asian american senator elected in 1965. number 5 daniel k. the first senator of native hawaiian ancestry. norman was the first asian

american of the president alcabinet severing under president george w. bush. number 7 is edwin lee, the mayor of san francisco. number 8 elane the first asian american woman member of a president alcandidate. it's severing in the george w. bush and donald trump administration. number nine, harris, the first woman and first asian american to hold the office of the vice president elected in 2020. that should also represent the highest position now, for asian americans in the

government. they earned california license. they earned it in 1916. katherine m.d. had a breakthrough in functionally curing newborns of aids. the doctor is a philippine no american physician and pediatric immunologist that was named one of time magazine scenes most influent alpeople in the world. number four, darrell sioux a ph.d. for the contrick ambigous of ethnic minority psychology. dr. darrell is known for his

work on multiculture alcounselling and racial microaggression. dr. stanley is best known for his work on culture al competency. number five, marjorie for the first native hawaiians. from the american position. there is groundbreaking research among native hawaiians and pacific islanders in 1912. they have done wonderful work. dr. david a chinese american worked on the treatment of aids and proved that hiv replicates immediately when

entering the bloodstream. a gynecologists and obstetrician helped refugees and advocated for justice. he also petaried cambodian journalist in the 1984 film the killing field. number 8 abraham, an indian american physician for advocating for the importance of empathy in physician and patient relations. he worked with young aids patients at a time little could be done with them. number nine dr. paul was a chinese-american cardiologist and first asian president of the american heart association from 1972 and '73. a